His writings certainly suggest he was religious and I haven't seen any credentialed source claim he was not. You asked for cites earlier for some pretty straightforward claims, do you have one for this rather extra-ordinary one?

If you're going to label any religious person's reasoning that you agree with as "anti-religious", your point is going to be suspiciously easy to support. Again I think you are falling into the trap where you make it very easy to hold on to fantastic claims, exactly the type of thinking that nets us religious beliefs that can actually be harmful.

Occam may have been good at logic, I don't know, but Occam's Razor has nothing to do with logic. You are unlikely to find it mentioned in a textbook or academic paper on logic, for example.

You are allowed to assume anything you like in logic, even that God exists (whatever that means).

This seems a little too strong. Occam's Razor is not used in formal logic, but it's not an unreasonable heuristic to use when other approaches do not yield insight.

Here is your answer. Read carefully.

It is not illogical to think that there was some sort of god who created our universe. The question "who created that god" doesn't doesn't refute that.

If you further think that god is paying attention to us and perhaps even answers prayers that is wishful thinking in light of the evidence. But it doesn't mean you are illogical or dumb IF you admit that the objective evidence seems to point the in the other direction.

If you go even further and think that god has the specific attributes of one of the Earth's religions, that is EXTREME wishful thinking bordering on the delusional, given the evidence plus the fact that that smart scholars, both religious and not, are quite sure you are wrong. Still though, if you admit that logical thinking and evidence would probably persuade a totally objective, smart, observer that your thoughts are at least partially erroneous, your beliefs don't guarantee you are dumb.

But what of those people who think that there religious beliefs actually follow from critical thinking and physical evidence? People who think that their specific religion espouses truths that a discerning thinker would have no choice but to agree with its likelihood? Those people are idiots. Are there a lot of them? Well I contend that there are more than would initially admit it. Because there are some religious Christians who claim to admit that their beliefs don't follow from logic but then go on to assert something that contradicts that. I speak of those Protestants who say that their god will not let you into heaven unless you truly believe the Jesus story, son of god etc.

That assertion by itself does not automatically mean that they believe that the truth of the Jesus story must follow from logic. But when they also assert that God is fair and just they bump into a problem. Because if God is fair he wouldn't punish people who used logic and physical evidence to come to the conclusion that the Jesus story is unlikely. It would only be fair to punish those people if an objective person would deduce the truth of the Jesus story.

Some people try to get around this problem by saying we are using humans definition of fairness rather than god's. Fair enough. Still we have the following conclusion:

If you assert that God is just and fair by our definition of those words. And if you further assert that God will punish you for not thinking the Jesus story very likely, then it must be because you think the likelihood of the Jesus story follows from thoughtful THINKING rather than just FAITH. And if you can pass a lie detector test that you think all that, my 69 year old self will still honor that math SAT challenge against you.

Just because you get a question wrong doesn't mean you're incapable of rational thought. I don't think this kind of bigotry is warranted.

Maybe so. Especially when there is an overwhelming psychological need to get it wrong. Such as wanting to believe your drug dealing father is in heaven because he accepted Christ three minutes before he died.

Okay, Occam's Razor has nothing to do with whether a logical argument is valid.

I'm not convinced that heuristics have anything to do with logic, although there is some suggestion that they do here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic

They arent capable of it at all? In any realm of experience? They are unable to function in the world, they cannot deduce simple conclusions, they cannot make simple decisions based on perceived facts?

Do you consider inductive reasoning to be "logic"? (And no, I'm not talking about the mathematical type of induction. I'm talking about generalizing from the observation of patterns and things like that.)

I know what you mean. Brian and Piers once explained it to me.

If it's not covered in a logic textbook then it's not logic, I guess.

Seems like the Razor is a pretty essential part of abductive reasoning (aka Inference to Best Explanation)

It's more a principle for solving problems. So while not specifically a part of the formal logic, it should still be is a good think when applying logic (or some sort of formal language).

Here is my contribution to this thread: 'Lol at you.'

They are irrational when it comes to religion , as long as other aspects of life don't contradict/interfere with their religion they can be rational in other parts of life .

Arguments such as ''Some of the greatest philosophers in history were religious'' are such nonsense , you had 2 options back then : either you were ''religious'' or you were thrown on a pile and burned for heresy .

Heresy takes place within a religion, not outside it. You are confusing "heretic" with "heathen".

If you're going to use history (and strangely specific definitions of it) as an argument, errors like that doesn't put your case in a good light.

I've asked it a million times: what is the ontology of logic? It is not a material thing, but you believe in it and you use it and you could not function without it. So what is it and where does it come from?

I would say that it's similar to the ontology of mathematics. It's just out there in the universe.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/p...m-mathematics/

As to where it comes from, I would suggest that it comes from the same place the rest of the universe came from.

Logic isn't really thought of as being made up of any particular things, so there are no entities (platonic or otherwise) that constitute logic. Obviously logic is used in mathematics, and platonism is a position about the existence of mathematical objects like numbers, but there's no need for a similar ontological theory to account for the rules of logic themselves.

Generally logic is seen as a set of truth preserving rules relative to a language (usually formal), so what drives the rules of logic is what it takes for an argument to be truth preserving. Depending on your understanding of truth then it may be that your commitments that support a particular logic include ontological commitments, and thus particular general ontological positions like platonism, but the idea behind logic doesn't require any particular ontological position.

I'm not good enough on the details of, say, classical logic to know if it's generally understood in a way that requires specific ontological positions. I would strongly suspect it doesn't. There's no such thing as 'one' or 'the proper' logic, the general idea is about what particular logics do - preserve truth in arguments. Different logics handle different languages and so on.

Yes, there are a gazillion different logics. They're all rubbish. I would argue that there is one logic; the one that is used in at least 95% of mathematics ever published, for example.

So do you only accept binary logic?

Yeah, I should revise my language a little bit. It wasn't very well thought out. I think I need something more like this:

Logic:Math :: Laws of Physics:Physical Universe

Many-valued logics, fuzzy logic and the like have been around for some time now. What have they achieved and how much have they impacted mathematics? Not much, apparently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-valued_logic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic

Fuzzy logic has applications in cryptography, automation, machine learning and electronics.

"Usefulness" as in how something has applied to mathematics isn't a good metric. There are plenty of problems in the world where mathematics isn't the best solution (and in many cases not even a solution yet). Sure, fuzzy logic is not a good approach when you need exact proofs in advance. But you can't really prove exactly what your next hammer blow will do either - that doesn't mean hammers are useless. A decent guess is often very useful.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/l.../#AppManValLog

You also didn't answer the question. The question was not whether they were useful, but whether you accept them (as logic).

I confess there's more of it than I thought:

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/afs/2013/581879/

I would still argue that this is not what a successful theory which has been around for 50 years looks like. I doubt that much of it has made it into the mainstream logic journals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_logic_journals